That this assumption of Marguerite could not continue exclusive Mr. Raleigh found, when now and then joined in his walks by an airy figure flitting forward at his side:  now and then; since Mrs. Laudersdale, without knowing how to prevent, had manifested an uneasiness at every such rencontre;—­and that it could not endure forever, another gentleman, without so much reason, congratulated himself,—­Mr. Frederic Heath, the confidential clerk of Day, Knight, and Company,—­a rather supercilious specimen, quite faultlessly got up, who had accompanied her from New York at her father’s request, and who already betrayed every symptom of the suitor.  Meanwhile, Mrs. McLean’s little women clamorously demanded and obtained a share of her attention,—­although Capua and Ursule, with their dark skins, brilliant dyes, and equivocal dialects, were creatures of a more absorbing interest.

One afternoon, Marguerite came into the drawing-room by one door, as Mr. Raleigh entered by another; her mother was sitting near the window, and other members of the family were in the vicinity, having clustered preparatory to the tea-bell.

Marguerite had twisted tassels of the willow-catkins in her hair, drooping things, in character with her wavy grace, and that sprinkled her with their fragrant yellow powder, the very breath of spring; and in one hand she had imprisoned a premature lace-winged fly, a fairy little savage, in its sheaths of cobweb and emerald, and with its jewel eyes.

“Dear!” said Mrs. Purcell, gathering her array more closely about her.  “How do you dare touch such a venomous sprite?”

“As if you had an insect at the North with a sting!” replied Marguerite, suffering it, a little maliciously, to escape in the lady’s face, and following the flight with a laugh of childlike glee.

“Here are your snowflakes on stems, mamma,” she continued, dropping anemones over her mother’s hands, one by one;—­“that is what Mr. Raleigh calls them.  When may I see the snow?  You shall wrap me in eider, that I may be like all the boughs and branches.  How buoyant the earth must be, when every twig becomes a feather!” And she moved toward Mr. Raleigh, singing, “Oh, would I had wings like a dove!”

“And here are those which, if not daffodils, yet

     “’Come before the swallow dares, and take
     The winds of March with beauty,’”

he said, giving her a basket of hepaticas and winter-green.

Marguerite danced away with the purple trophy, and, emptying a carafe into a dish of moss that stood near, took them to Mrs. Laudersdale, and, sitting on the footstool, began to rearrange them.  It was curious to see, that, while Mrs. Laudersdale lifted each blossom and let the stem lie across her hand, she suffered it to fall into the place designated for it by Marguerite’s fingers, that sparkled in the mosaic till double wreaths of gold-threaded purple rose from the bed of vivid moss and melted into a fringe of the starry spires of winter-green.